


The Other Woman

by Rosebelle_believes



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Emotional release, Gen, Repressed Emotion, sherlock POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 09:38:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosebelle_believes/pseuds/Rosebelle_believes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A self-professed sociopath, he was not surprised that most people found him disengaged, emotionally distant or just damn right infuriating. However, the consensus of opinion regarding his emotive capacity was woefully inaccurate. It was not that he was incapable of expressing emotion: he simply chose not to.</p><p>She became the exception to his rule. She was his weakness, his undoing. It was intoxicating, beguiling and powerfully addictive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Woman

The general consensus of opinion regarding his emotive capacity was almost entirely wrong. Not that that surprised him in the very least. The majority of those with whom he came into close contact seemed to think him disengaged and devoid of empathy, completely unable to form lasting attachments to anyone or anything. To some, like Anderson and Donovan, this was an abnormal character flaw, freakish behaviour to be regarded with mistrust and suspicion. Other more charitable souls sought to classify it as a congenital problem – high functioning autism or Aspergers. Even John, who knew him more than any one else - apart perhaps from Mycroft - suspected he suffered from some form of pervasive developmental disorder; possibly sub-threshold autism.

On at least three occasions, the detective had caught his friend furtively hunched over his laptop, interrogating online medical databases. As soon as Sherlock had entered the room the screen would be flicked to minimise; a slight flush of the cheek, darting eye movements, and a perceptible hitch in breathing, all indicating that John had committed some perceived transgression. Interest piqued, Sherlock had one evening hacked into the machine, counting on the fact that his flatmate was not paranoid enough to delete the previous search history. Sure enough it was all there, and from it Sherlock could easily piece together an inferred diagnosis based on the symptoms the doctor had searched on – ‘ _emotional distance_ ’, ‘ _inability to empathise_ ’, ‘ _difficulties in peer relations_ ’, ‘ _inappropriate social behaviour_ '.

This liturgy of terms was ample testimony to the detective’s well-honed powers of dissemblance, although he had to admit to being a little wounded by the reduction of his character to such clinical terms. He had thought – or rather hoped - that John had perceived something beyond the surface: that Sherlock was perhaps something much more than a collection of socially inappropriate parts. You see, all of these assumptions were fundamentally flawed, albeit based on sound observational evidence. Sherlock was not emotionally deficient or stunted. He had the capacity to be deeply moved by all manner of things, and could be fully cognisant of the feelings and sentiments of others: he simply chose not to. It was a conscious decision and one requiring constant vigilance.

It had been a guise adopted in adolescence; puberty hitting him like a wrecking ball and smashing away all peace and equilibrium in its wake. He had always been what his mother had termed ‘highly strung’, but at fifteen his hypothalamus sought to set him adrift on a thrashing sea of gonadotrophins. Almost overnight, Lust, anger, desire, envy, love and rage, all exploded into his head like water on quicklime – a seething, hissing, scalding mire of raw, un-channelled emotion. Any form of clear thought became a constant battle. All his sagacity lost to the chaos his pituitary gland insisted on pumping around his body. It had felt like losing himself – disappearing - spiralling ever downwards in a double helix of blinding light and white noise.

His salvation had been the construction of his mind palace. Mycroft had taught him how, showing him how to disassociate completely from those thoughts and emotions which had threatened to overwhelm him. Through constant practice he was able to quell his conflicting feelings and reassert some semblance of order; to restore a degree of calm and clarity and regain something of his former perspicacity. Unfortunately, this had not been before he had plunged certain depths and undertaken things he would dearly like to now erase from his memory. He had spent years trying, but despite the ease with which he could remove other extraneous pieces of information, these memories remained indelible – undeletable files burnt onto the hard drive. They served as a stark reminder of the capricious nature of the mind. Acuity and reason was something that had to be worked at, and required certain sacrifices needed to be made: there could be no margin of error, no half-measures. As he grew older things had become easier, his emotions more manageable. They seldom threatened to surge up and smash through the breakwater but were, instead, a faint irritation scratching away at the edges of his psyche. Nevertheless, there still remained a deep labyrinth beneath his mind palace, where the Minotaur stamped and snorted.

She was the only exception to his rule. She had become his weakness. His fundamental flaw: his hamartia. He knew that with her there could be no concealment, no artifice. She had the ability to reach down into his very gut and rip it all out of him, pulling out thick visceral ropes of repressed desire, half-dreamt love and suppressed rage; gobbets of fear and doubt, and tough sinews of guilt and longing. He was left exposed, hiding nothing. She was a conduit, absorbing it all into herself and offering him amelioration. It made her intoxicating, beguiling and powerfully addictive.

Much to John’s chagrin, she had become entrenched in their lives. He had to have her around constantly. Even when he sought to banished everyone else from his company, she could be found reclining on the sofa or resting in the armchair by the fire. For days he would lock himself away without exchanging one single civil word with his flatmate, wanting neither food nor sleep, but always she would be there, hovering around the edges of his mind, calling to him. In the midst of working on a case, when his brain was focused on the intricacies of deduction, synapses firing like artillery, he would crave her, occasionally having to abandon everything to go and look for her. He had tried to stop, partly to appease John and partly to allay his own fears of dependence, but he couldn’t. He needed her, it surpassed rational explanation.

John slammed the door and stomped down the stairs, leaving just the two of them alone. Sherlock sat folded in the armchair, his arm protectively curled around her waist and her neck resting on his shoulder. He was angry and hurt, the altercation leaving him spinning. In a desperate effort to quell his emotions, to stop them bubbling up to the surface, he ran through the timetable of the Intercity 125 Express from Edinburgh to London King’s Cross, trying to restore limpidity and definition. It was a losing battle.

Letting all resolution slip away, he submitted and leaned into her, shifting slightly in his chair and breathing steadily. Gently, he drew a long, pale finger along the outline of one of her ribs, tracing the path of the curve. He liked to touch her and feel her close, moving his hand down the line of her back. It felt cool against the heat of his palm, gliding smoothly over the gentle swell of her body. He wanted her, wanted to pour all his frustration and confusion into her till there was nothing left but that one steady point of pure stillness, a rush of Oxytocin: the _lunga fermata_.

Lifting her carefully and cradling her against his chest, he stood up in one fluid movement and moved them both over to the window. A cold draught from the poorly fitting frame cut through the thin material of his shirt, raising tiny goose bumps all along his arms. His blood thrummed with anticipation, the sensitive pads of his fingers gliding along the length of her neck and settling on well familiar pressure points. They move together, him leaning over her and shifting her weight slightly so it settles more comfortable against his shoulder, she in response nestling further under the crook of his jaw. Every molecule of his being is alive and hypersensitive. Silently he waits, letting the moment fill him. Then, taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes, lifts the bow and draws forth a perfect vibrato on G.

**Author's Note:**

> This was, of course, written with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek. However, I was surprised to find out that Oxytocin - the chemical which seems to be released when we are sexually aroused - is actually released by some musicians when playing (http://researchmatters.asu.edu/stories/music-and-mood-hormone-connection-774). That is certainly the incentive I need to keep practising :)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading...I am just off to a small, dark room with my violin!


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